There’s good things you can do when you speculate and there’s stupid shit you can do.
Stupid speculation involves the mindless shit you see in stories like this on CNet: Apple’s rumored iWatch delays due to manufacturing issues?
A product can’t be delayed unless the company making the product has issued a launch date. Apple has done no such thing. So this speculative headline is a waste of time.
Then there’s the other kind of speculation. The fun speculation. The creative speculation that involves your imagination. I’m talking about when people imagine what a supposed product might look or work like. Or, if they’re disappointed in an existing product, showing you what’s possible in an alternate universe.
Of of my more recent favorite examples is the Microsoft rebranding done by (then student) Andrew Kim. This work landed him a job on the XBox team.
The newest Apple rumor, as mentioned above, is Apple’s supposed iWatch.
Designer Todd Hamilton created a beautiful animated 3-D rendering of his vision of the “iWatch”:
Now, we can argue about the practicality of Hamilton’s idea and poke holes in all the things he might have done wrong, but to do so would be to miss the point. Design is iterative. Hamilton’s iWatch video should be seen as a baton in a race someone else can pick up and run with and improve.
The Version One of anything is usually not what the Shipped Version looks and works like (neither are a lot of Version Twos, Threes, Fours and Fives).
